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Zusatztext Anthony Howe now fills not only many gaps in our understanding of the politics of an idea central to Victorian and Edwardian Britain but also prompts important questions for the study of political economy ... This rich, detailed account of the Victorian survival of free trade as a story of adaptive mutation in different spheres of the political process has implications for our understanding of the changing sources of the political power of economic ideas in modern Britain ... This book marks an important step away from views of Cobdenism as a static monolith or as a function of economic or State structures and, by restoring free trade politics as a major historical subject in its own right, opens the way towards a more critical understanding of the place of free trade in modern Britain. Klappentext Free trade was one of the most distinctive features of the British state--and of British economic, social, and political life--in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is the first book to explain why free trade was so important, and to examine the reasons for its longevity. Howe covers a crucial century in free trade history, from the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, through the turbulent years of the Tariff Reform debate, to the end of the Second World War. Zusammenfassung An explanation of why free trade, a defining feature of the British state and British economic, social and political life in the 19th and early 20th centuries, was so important and examining the reasons for its longevity. Howe covers a crucial period in free trade history from the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, to the end of the Second World War.
